Articles
Daily articles carefully curated by the All About Jazz staff. Read our popular and future articles.
The Very Singular Mr. Ran Blake
There have been few American composers and musicians, with the ability to encapsulate their country's music in all its racial and ethnic complexity. We might perhaps point to Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Charles Ives and perhaps, in their own distaff ways, Harry Partch and Steve Reich. In jazz, their number is fewer still--Duke Ellington and George Russell certainly and, at a stretch, Jelly Roll Morton. And then there's pianist and composer Ran Blake. Listening to any one of ...
read moreChris Trinidad: Chris Trinidad y Con Todo
Filipino-Canadian bassist/composer Chris Trinidad has an eclectic discography. His previous album Chris Trinidad's Chant Triptych II (Iridium Records, 2018) presented arrangements of Gregorian chant, drawing on musical traditions from around the world. He has also recorded Latin music, as on Chris Trinidad's Certain Times (Iridium Records, 2015). But this album is Latin jazz all the way. Appropriately, Trinidad composed these songs while working on cruise ships in the Caribbean. Having played a lot of Latin music from the beginning of ...
read moreMarco Sanguinetti: Inmoral
Born, raised and still residing in Argentina, pianist-composer Marco Sanguinetti writes jewel-fine, poetic miniatures which bring back a time and place when individual voices of all talents were the wealth and treasure of any civilized society. Quite unlike, without getting too far afield, the mob-speak we're choked with today. The dozen tracks that tell the story of Inmoral, Sanguinetti's seventh, is a mother lode of these shining miniatures. Like haiku, they last. And, as with haiku throughout the ...
read moreSimon Vincent's The Occasional Trio: Live In Berlin
Released on his own Vision Of Sound label, pianist and composer Simon Vincent's Live in Berlin is a collection of live recordings from two shows in 2018 and 2019 at the Schlot Jazz Club, Berlin, Germany. In the liner notes, Vincent acknowledges the risks of live performance recordings, but at the same time, he states in the liner notes with conviction that: “The studio gives you the possibility to concentrate on details, but you may lose a certain spontaneity, whereas ...
read moreKelso, Ricciardi & Lussu, and University of Toronto Jazz Orchestra
Three new albums dominate the show.... Mark Kelso is an award-winning Jazz drummer who has worked with artists such as Donny McCaslin, Pat Metheny, Holly Cole, Gino Vannelli and numerous others. Playing in every genre from Jazz to Pop to Latin to Orchestral, Mark has been able to finesse his technique as a drummer and composer, as well as open himself up to a wide variety of influences. His new solo album is a departure from the Fusion ...
read moreKendrick Scott: Making Walls into Bridges
Kendrick Scott authored one of the most compelling jazz releases of last year with A Wall Becomes a Bridge (Blue Note, 2019), a nuanced meditation on identity, history and prejudice, shepherded under the direction of producer and former band mate Derrick Hodge. Pairing gorgeous, searching improvisatory canvases with break beat interludes and samples from guest DJ Sundance, it's a record that feels unmistakably engaged in its moment, and marks the culmination of Scott's work with his quintet Oracle, unmistakably colored ...
read moreMichelle Lordi: Break Up With the Sound
Vocalist Michelle Lordi's house burned down at the end of 2017. That is a bracing life event from which one may find oneself at a brutally curious fork in the road. Lordi's Break Up With the Sound makes it seem that she blazed through Kubler Ross's five stages of loss and got to work on something so new, it smelled of white-hot creation. Lordi's modus operandi has been addressing the Great American Songbook, as evidenced by her densely competent Dream ...
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Contest Giveaway
ELIGIBLE WINNERS: 5 | DAYS REMAINING: 25
Prize: Ragmala: A Garland Of Ragas by Adam Rudolph
World music pioneer Adam Rudolph and his groundbreaking Go: Organic Orchestra join forces with Brooklyn Raga Massive to create the monumental new album, Ragmala – A Garland of Ragas (Meta Records). Ragmala bridges generations, cultures and traditions in a deep-rooted, forward-looking sound born of 21st-century innovation and hybrid voices. Epic in scale and ambition, the project features 40 world-class musicians including Gnawa master musician Hassan Hakmoun, legendary drummer/percussionist Hamid Drake, forward-thinking cornetist Graham Haynes, and tradition-blurring flutist...
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